The One Percent

Given the choice, people choose another cider over ours 99% of the time.

Ignoring that our cider is hard to find, even when they are presented the option this is still true. Respectively, they choose another cider because: 1) our price is too high, and 2) they would prefer something lighter or sweeter to drink.

If it were the other way around I’d be OK with this (albeit it disappointed in American tastes) but that isn't the dominant reason. I know that price is what turns people toward other ciders nearly every time and, yes, this bothers me.

But my response to being bothered is exactly opposite what you might expect.

Let me explain…

First of all, our cider price is about as low as it can be without us be forced into work elsewhere. We aren't getting rich, in fact, in the end, we pay ourselves about $4 an hour and our final price sits about as low as it can be given all the costs of doing business (all combined goods and services accrued along the way) plus our 4$/hour (Polly and I do 99% of the work ourselves.) And after we factor those costs, we then measure that against our overall quantity and there you have it: our relatively higher price.
“Aha!”, you say, “That’s the problem, the quantity! You need to make more cider so that the price of production can be better diffused! If you did that then the price could be lower and more people would buy your cider!”

  What, am I an idiot? Do you think I haven’t already considered this? 
Look, I know that our higher price is the #1 reason people don’t choose our cider but our response to this isn’t what you’d expect it to be. Instead of stretching, compromising, or magically upping the volume of fruit me and my farm (or wild trees) can produce, we work extra hard at changing the consumer’s opinion of what cider SHOULD cost. In other words, instead of compromising the product we're focusing on the narrative that consumers have concerning cider costs in the first place.  And rather than addressing the local market only (which has relatively high land and costs-per-living anyway) we are offering the larger market our higher-priced cider in an effort to change the narrative top down.

   Simply, to make a cheaper version of cider (particularly, to slip down that slippery slope of “stretching the volume”) I, or anyone who does this outside their local economy, must rationalize the shortcuts. There is no other way of saying this. If you told me you agree with those rationalizations (you literally “bought this explanation”) then I’d have no choice but to accept that we are "high priced" because you believe in those compromises, but I know (I ABSOLUTELY KNOW) that you, the customer are not aware of all those shortcuts and I also know that they erode the sustainability of real cider in the market place. If the cheapest always wins (and it seems to) then even Angry Orchard will become a rarely-purchased "luxury" product when China (who produce 55% of the world's apples) starts selling "good cider" at 3-cents/ per can (good because it is rationalized to be good).
  We (all people like me, grower/ producers who are truly tiny because of our limited local resources) have something better to offer than the tempting carrot of cheap prices. If America accepts the slippery-slope argument of stretching the volume then America is essentially condoning the current agriculture of apples which rewards scale consolidation and the heavy manipulation of the tree. In fact, apples are America’s most sprayed, most manipulated crop because customers already DID condone this. Why do you think most apples are grown on macro-farms far away from where people live? Without getting into the details of cloning and the heavy application of insecticides, herbicides, fungicides and rodentacides (etc.) it's these truths about scale-production that I am confronting with a higher price. When the local equation is taken out of it, price ALWAYS comes down economy-of-scale and it's "whatever it takes" measures.

  
   Most already know this but the disconnect between personal ethics and spending is instinctual. So I must repeat and repeat the argument and hope the message spreads when customers get together and talk. Before I die I want at least 98% of you to know the truth behind cider and it’s agriculture. I'm not going to make more cider, but to go from 1% to 2% of the market would mean more producers like me (and there are plenty like me already) could emerge and up-end the current narrative of cider pricing in American stores. That's what all this writing is about, that's why I've rejected all association with national and state trade associations, and that's why our price hasn't fallen. 
  Call me stubborn, call me an asshole, but don't call me rich. And you'd be dead wrong to think our customers are American's rich 1% too. Our ciders are for the 1% who agree with me about supporting the local economy, limited resources, and healthy agriculture. That's what pricing comes down to.

Let Them Eat Intimacy Cake

In a recent magazine review of Uncultivated the reviewer latched onto a line I wrote in the seventh chapter, a chapter about running a small cider business. The line, “There is nothing worse than a sellout,” sounds as though I'm being curmudgeony when in actually the very next paragraph was about how homestead farmers need to make money too. The difference, however, should exempt limited small-scale farmers from suffering the same "sellout" stigma that greedy opportunists deserve. That’s because we are selling our products second, not first. The primary goal is to develop intimate relationships (like to our land, customers, and trees, for instance) but deep relationships thrive on the economy of limitations. The person with thousands of “Facebook friends”, for instance, is likely not devoting much time to meaningful friendships, and in the end it's Quantity or Quality. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.

But I’m afraid this view of business is increasingly becoming antiquated, like the extinction of aboriginal languages and the lifestyles of tribal people in the rain forest. Large-scale farming and monoculture are taking over and all you need to do is study live satellite photography to see the alarming speed of “limitless growth” and how it’s absorbing every last inch of undeveloped space (oh, the sad, sad irony.) 

In a parallel universe, our “modern society” works against us too. It’s become increasingly incomprehensible that a person just does the things they love to do, or because they feel it’s the right thing to do. I recently stumbled across this blog (linked here) written 14 years ago, about the growing trend in the Millennial Era of “monetizing” that which was once sacred (art, personal relationships, or simply fun leisure activities.) Nowadays, some people look at everything as an opportunity of converting it into a money-making exploit. I like how the Seth’s Blog post ends: –maybe you will, one day, figure out how to achieve the much-heralded monetization. But if that’s your primary goal, the compromises you make along the way will likely cause your efforts to backfire. (But you got read the full article to learn how that is.)

In all, I like the reviewer’s take on my book, and I will accept sounding like a curmudgeon even if the magazine overemphasized this voice. A lot of fellow cider makers, apple farmers, and especially “trade groups” have faulted me for being too critical (despite the irony) and say that I should be more supportive. Well, that’s where I know they are wrong! for it’s me that is the supportive one. If I can’t accept a compromised version of cider or personal cider farming then I am the one being an advocate for the future, not them. They are selling out cultures, ideals, and beauty all for the profit afforded by the actual mechanics of today’s efficient industry. They call it “being realistic.” But this is a culture we are involved with as cider-makers and apple farmers, we are not making plastic widgets to be sold as cheaply as possible. It's about art, agriculture, beauty, and personal relationships (real reasons for living!) And so for those who call me a curmudgeon let me remind you of something that perhaps you don’t realize: NOBODY loves art more than the art critic.  

Not Dead Yet

I am by default a depressed and jaded person.

Even without following the news (which I don’t, and therefore I’m not up to date on the latest climate change news) I still bare witness to the homogenization, monetization, or flat-out death of cultures that I love. From species extinctions, to the exploitation of human heritages, even to the commoditization of personal relationships (ahem, social media) it seems like everything in this world has become contorted and fast-tracked for this economy. And those things I love must also fit within that business model of continuous growth and large-scale efficiency lest they too die by the roadside.  

Cider drives on this road too now. You might even say it’s in the left lane. As the industry looks to homogenize itself in every aspect -from its’ language (which is used to sum-up the vast worlds each product represents), to the cloning of a select few “cider varieties” which will make it easier to farm and market apples on a mass-scale -I see it happening in my little corner of the world too. And I get depressed and jaded.

But every few years in May something miraculous happens. Thousands and thousands of wild apples seem to emerge out of the forest waving victory flags (a head full of blossoms) as if to yell to us as we drive by, “Hey! We’re not dead yet!”

These are trees, mind you, that even I -a person obsessed with wild apple trees going on a quarter century -don’t usually notice either. Where the hell did they come from? As magical as the aurora borealis is, this brief and rare occurrence restores my faith in this world. They remind me that that things can prosper in the shadows. Apples, cider, businesses and human cultures can still grow organically.